On Writing

1 Mar 2016

The difference between a tolerable programmer and a great programmer is not how many programming languages they know, and it’s not whether they prefer Python or Java. It’s whether they can communicate their ideas. By persuading other people, they get leverage. By writing clear comments and technical specs, they let other programmers understand their code, which means other programmers can use and work with their code instead of rewriting it. Absent this, their code is worthless. - Joel Spolsky

I know communication is really important, but never really understand until recently. Lack of communication hurts and slow down every progress of software development.

As an introvert and a programmer, communication never been my strong suit, but this need to be changed. Only with better communication a team can be functional to its highest performance.

Communication is hard, particulary written communication. Writing good spec, documentation, and bug/issue is important skill to have if you work with other people. Miscomunication costs a lot, money and time.

How do we get better on written communication? Well, by writing ton of stuff. You need to practice, for example: blogging. Write a tweet doesn’t count here.

Better at writing is a journey and not something you’ll get better overnight. Just get out there and write something!